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How to View Descriptions of the Following Links

To view my copy describing the significance about each link, place your curser lightly over link. The copy will appear, then disappear. When this happens, take curser away from the link, then bring it back. Continue reading. Hope this helps!

As many of you know, Dr. Bernard Bihari was the genius who discovered that a very low dose of naltrexone, a drug that had been approved at a higher dose by the FDA for another purpose entirely, could help people with some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases.

Thanks to Dr. Bihari, tens of thousands (some say hundreds of thousands) of people with multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, HIV/AIDS and even cancer are now living better lives. Many are now symptom-free.

Dr. Bihari is one of my personal heroes, and one of the heroes of my book, HONEST MEDICINE.

I am honored that Dr. Bihari’s widow (and my dear friend) Jackie Young, has entrusted me with a video from 2002, never before seen on the Internet.

Jackie has asked me to share this treasure with you.

This video is more than one hour of Dr. Bihari talking about his life and his work with LDN.Rather than dividing the video into 10-minute segments for YouTube, I have opted to include it in its entirety here. In addition, I have transcribed the entire video so that you can read Dr. Bihari’s words. And, so that you can easily find the parts of the video you want to watch first, I have included a timeline. Just drag the cursor to the sections you want to watch first; then come back and watch other sections at your leisure. It’s a wonderful video, with lots of great information.

I hope you will take advantage of this opportunity to see Dr. Bihari, up close and personal, as he was in 2002.

And I also hope you’ll take the time to leave messages for Jackie, his beloved partner for so many years, in the comments section below.

My book, HONEST MEDICINE, was listed as "temporarily out of stock" on Amazon.com for several weeks. Although this is no longer the case, I want people to know that it has always been readily AVAILABLE on BarnesAndNoble.com. I am therefore encouraging people to buy it from BarnesAndNoble.com. To do this, please please click here to order.

Thanks so much! I appreciate your support of my book.

NEW SPECIAL: I will be happy to make HONEST MEDICINE available in BULK at a reduced rate for anyone who wants to give it as a PRESENT or GIVEAWAYfor their group of organization. Just write to me at Julia@HonestMedicine.com. In the subject line, type: "HONEST MEDICINE FOR GIVEAWAY." Again, thanks!

Dr. Bihari: My medical training started at Harvard Medical School. I graduated in 1957. Then I trained in Internal Medicine at one of the Harvard teaching hospitals in Boston, Beth Israel, and then in Neurology at Massachusetts General in Boston. Then I went to the National Institutes of Health for two years doing brain physiology—brain research. I did another residency training in Psychiatry in New York, at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center and then, over the following five or six years, I got very involved in working in Drug Addiction. By 1974, I was the City Addiction Commissioner. I ran all the programs that the city funded for addicts. Then in 1978, the governor and the mayor met, when the governor took over management of the city’s addiction programs, because the city was in a budget crisis. Mayor Koch saved about $8 million and I moved to the city health department as a Deputy Commissioner. I was the only deputy medical commissioner. I basically ran the city health department for about three years. Then I moved to King’s County Hospital, where I ran a cluster of addiction programs for drug addicts and alcoholics. By the early ‘80s, as the AIDS epidemic began, I got very concerned about it. I was seeing large numbers of the heroin addicts I was treating die. I had a couple of friends who died of HIV in the late ‘80s. I got very concerned about what I saw as a major epidemic—a worldwide epidemic—coming over time. That’s sort of a background, taking me up to the point where I started doing this research. QUESTION: Can you talk about working with methadone?

Dr. Bihari: Yes, my first job with city government was running all of the city health department’s methadone programs. There were forty-one—shortly after the methadone system had been put in place. It was while I was doing that that the mayor, Abe Beame, moved the addiction services agency into the health department, and I took over the management of all the addiction programs: the drug-free and the methadone programs. And I ran both for about four years. I was one of the early proponents of methadone and, because of my job in city government, for a couple of years I was a major spokesperson for methadone—which in subsequent years, I had mixed feelings about. Then I became more broadly involved in drug addiction and alcoholism as a public health problem. Then, later, I shifted my energy to AIDS.

Q: How did your connection with Naltrexone begin?

Dr. Bihari: In 1984, the National Institute on Drug Abuse finished the development of Naltrexone as an adjunct to treating heroin addicts. Its purpose was to block the heroin high with the hope that it would become a very useful treatment for heroin addicts. It works in heroin addicts by blocking the receptors in cells, mostly in the brain in that situation. Heroin uses primarily the pain receptors. They're all called opioid receptors. Those that are involved in pain relief, and relief of fear. It’s a designer drug, really. It was designed in the laboratory to block those receptors and prevent heroin from having access to them. So addicts would take 50 mg a day in the morning and couldn't get high for hours. It would take a very large amount of heroin to overcome the high. The blockade caused by naltrexone. And when the drug came out, I was interested in trying it. I gave it to about two dozen heroin addicts who had recently stopped using heroin. None of them would stay on it. At the doses involved it caused anxiety, depression, irritability. They couldn't sleep, and even minor stresses that they could handle the day before, they couldn't handle on days that they took naltrexone in the morning. So it was out on the market, and has remained so since, but has been relatively little used.

One of the things I did know from its development, which I had followed closely because I was treating addicts, is that naltrexone, when taken in these high doses, would get the body to triple its production of endorphins. Endorphins are the hormones that heroin works by mimicking. They have a number of functions in the body. They relieve pain; they relieve fear. They're the hormones we use when we’re teenagers to cope with social situations and other anxiety-producing situations. It’s really endorphins that relieve the anxiety. They also play a major role during acute stress. For example, an animal who’s attacked in the jungle—his body responds by pouring out large amounts of endorphins, and in parallel, of corisol, which is a cortisone-related hormone. And the endorphins in that situation not only relieve the pain so that when the animal gets injured he’s not distracted. They relieve the fright. They also shift blood from the whole gastrointestinal tract where a lot of the blood flow is to the muscles and brain, which need it during a fight. And, most importantly, in this situation, they boost the immune system so that the immune cells double very quickly and the immune functions all improve with the large amount of endorphins poured out, so that if the animal gets injured, it’s much less likely to get infected, so there will be better wound healing. Because of its role in regulating immune function, I got interested in it in the mid-‘80s. In 1985, as I saw the AIDS epidemic expanding, I decided to shift my research energies from addiction to AIDS, and in particular, to look for something that might boost immune function. I knew that the immune system was regulated almost entirely by endorphins, and that also the endorphin production was markedly increased by naltrexone. My colleagues and I worked to find some way of using that ability of naltrexone to raise endorphins, but without the downside of naltrexone blocking the endorphins, the purpose being to find a way to raise endorphins to boost immune function. Along the way, we tested endorphin levels in ten people with AIDS and found they were extremely low—less than 30% of normal. So the hormones that people with AIDS need the most, to have the immune system fight the virus—those hormones are lacking. So, what we did was to do what's called a “dose ranging trial” to find the best dose of the drug to use to raise endorphins without blocking them at the same time.

What we did was we measured the endorphin rises with different doses of Naltrexone. We got the same rise with 50 mg, 10 mg, 5 mg, and 3 mg. What we were looking for was the smallest dose that could produce a full naltrexone-induced endorphin rise, if taken late at night. The reason the hour is important is that 90% of the endorphins are made in the middle of the night, between 2 and 4 in the morning. If a small dose of naltrexone is taken in the late evening, generally at bedtime, generally endorphin production is boosted as much as threefold, 300%. The naltrexone itself is gone in about 3 hours, but the endorphins remain elevated all the next day. So the naltrexone doesn't significantly block the endorphins but does cause them to rise. If someone with low endorphin levels starts taking low dose naltrexone every night, their endorphin levels will triple and stay tripled as long as they're taking the drug.

By popular demand, my book, HONEST MEDICINE: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening Diseases, is now available for the KINDLE. It took a long time—and about 100 hours of work by my dear friend Mark—but it is finally ready. And it looks great!! (Why it took so long to prepare is another story—for another posting. But please trust me, it did!)

On February 8th, I was interviewed by the wonderful integrative physician and author, Ronald Hoffman, MD, on his New York radio show, “Health Talk.”

Frankly, I knew that Dr. Hoffman would do a great interview:

I had read his books and loved them. And as a matter of fact, I myself had interviewed Dr. Hoffman for HonestMedicine.com, after his book, How to Talk with Your Doctor came out. I was introduced to him by his co-author, Sidney Stevens, a friend of mine, who thought that Dr. Hoffman would provide me with a great interview. He did. (Click here to listen to that interview.)

After that interview, Dr. Hoffman and I became friends, and I asked him to write a testimonial for my book, which he graciously did.

When HONEST MEDICINE was published, I knew that I wanted to be interviewed by Dr. Hoffman for his WOR-AM radio show in New York. I knew he’d do a great job, and that his large listenership would provide me with a unique opportunity to spread the word about the amazing treatments I feature in my book.

The interview aired on February 8th, 2011. I urge you to listen to it.

But nothing prepared me for what I now refer to as “The Hoffman Effect”:

Before the show was even over in New York, I began getting emails from Dr. Hoffman's listeners, telling me how much they were enjoying the interview, and asking for information about the treatments featured in mybook. I was happy to oblige.

I can’t thank Dr. Hoffman enough for giving me this opportunity to get the word out about HONEST MEDICINE, so that thousands of people will be able to learn about it. As most of you who are reading this know, this book is a mission and a passion for me.

NOTE: If you know of a radio host who is really good--like Dr. Hoffman--and who (like Dr. Hoffman) is knowledgeable about health topics, please write to me. I'd love to be a guest on many more shows like Dr. Hoffman's!!

“I commend Julia Schopick for spreading the word about these remarkable, yet overlooked therapies that can improve the lives of so many.”

Ronald Hoffman, MD, Founder and Medical Director of the Hoffman Center in New York, Host of “Health Talk,” nationally syndicated radio talk show, and best-selling author of several books, including Intelligent Medicine and Alternative Cures that Really Work:

“Any patient who is interested in learning about nontoxic, inexpensive alternatives to costly, side-effect-laden pharmaceuticals should read Julia’s book. I predict that Honest Medicine will become an instant classic.”

“Join with Julia Schopick and thousands of other health activists demanding these effective treatments ignored by mainstream medicine. A revolution is at hand, and Julia’s new book, Honest Medicine, is leading the charge with banner held high.”

David Brownstein, MD, Medical Director of the Center for Holistic Medicine in West Bloomfield, MI, and author of nine books on integrative medical topics:

“I recommend Honest Medicine to all who are open-minded and looking for safe, effective therapies that have a sound biochemical basis behind them. This book should be required reading for all physicians and patients searching for safe and effective therapies."

Jacob Teitelbaum, MD, author of the best-selling book, From Fatigued to Fantastic!

"When doctors tell you they can’t help you, thank them for their honesty. And then read Julia Schopick’s book!"

Thanks to these integrative doctors for their testimonials. I hope that more doctors will become like them--and start prescribing treatments like those featured in HONEST MEDICINE.

For over a year, I have been busy writing my book, HONEST MEDICINE: Effective, Time-Tested, Inexpensive Treatments for Life-Threatening Diseases. It has been wonderful, terrible, exhausting—and ultimately, life-changing time.

The idea for HONEST MEDICINE started germinating in 2002, when my husband Tim was in the hospital with a non-healing post-surgical head wound caused when his suture line wouldn't heal. His doctors performed 8 surgeries to try to get his skin to heal. Nothing worked.

Then, through a friend and colleague, Dr. Carlos Reynes, I found Silverlon, a different kind of wound-healing system. Just hours after placing Silverlon on Tim’s head, his skin started to heal.

The Democratic Party has recently launched a PR push to assure voters of the wonders of the newly enacted “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act.” It seems to me that the Democratic Party is at least a little concerned that this controversial legislation might be an albatross around their necks come midterm elections. They should be.

I recently attended a public presentation on the Act, a presentation delivered by an aide to Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat, who sat on the HELP committee which produced this bill in the senate. Bingaman's aide made some glowing claims for the legislation, and while some were true, others were not just inaccurate but outrageously, incredibly false.

Bold-faced lies about matters of public welfare tend to get under my skin, and in this case, they motivated me to take keyboard in hand and address some of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding the Affordable Care Act.